Open Doors to Safety NHCADSV

Friday, December 2, 2016

Let me talk about the word “entitled” for a bit. It is a word that gets thrown around a lot
when people talk about poor, oppressed, marginalized, and homeless persons who
are attempting to get their needs met in a lot of ways. I googled the word and here is what I found:

en·ti·tled

adjective

1.believing oneself to be inherently deserving of privileges or
special treatment.

"his
pompous, entitled attitude"

After reading that definition I thought it would be helpful
to also have the definition for the word “inherent.”

in·her·ent

adjective

1.existing in something as a permanent, essential, or
characteristic attribute.

In reading these I am led to the conclusion that
a person who feels entitled believes that there is something that has been granted
to them either by birth or investment that makes them deserving of special
privileges.

Do people who are homeless, oppressed, or marginalized in
other ways have special privileges that have been endowed on them by
society? Or are they just struggling to
gain a place of equity when they appear to be demanding of the attention of
service providers?

I like this image that shows the difference between equality
and equity –

If the person on our right asked the person on the left
for their box would you refer to them as feeling “entitled?” If the person demanded the box, would you
call them “entitled?” If you say yes,
then I would ask you to consider what privileges you have that you hold on to
so tightly that you can’t recognize that someone actually needs to be able to
see over the fence and that your privilege is keeping them from doing so.

When we refer to people as feeling “entitled” we are often
stating that our status quo is more important than others feeling like they live
in an equitable society.

As the holidays start to come around, you will see a number
of marginalized people struggling to get as much as they can from the various non-profits,
charitable organizations and churches that provide gifts and food throughout the
season. It may seem that they feel “entitled”
to everything they can get. Maybe, just
maybe, though, they feel that this generous outpouring from the community is
the best time to stock up because they are certain that they will be without
the things they need in the coming year.
Maybe, just maybe, they are seeing the same advertisements and
depictions of prosperous families that we do and are trying to create something
that resembles what they think the rest of the world has.

If you have a home to go to, a bed of your own to sleep in,
a regular paycheck, the ability to purchase gifts for your own children instead
of taking whatever has been picked out for you by others, the knowledge that
your table will have not only enough food for everyone but enough for
leftovers, and there are people in your life who support you, then you are seen
as the lucky ones. You are seen as
someone who has been entitled with privileges of which others only dream. When you refer to a marginalized person,
someone who is living on the edges of society in a shelter or below the poverty
line, as feeling “entitled” you are forgetting that they would love to have
those things to which you feel entitled.
However, they have been led to believe that they are not deserving of
those things because every time they reach for the box so they can see over the
fence, the fence gets higher and their box gets lower.

Remember, language is a powerful thing and if you find
yourself referring to marginalized and oppressed people in negative terms, you
become a part of the problem, not the solution.

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

I came across an article in the New Yorker recently that stressed the importance of assessing for traumatic brain injury in victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. This is also an advocacy issue. With approximately 50 percent of victims being strangled in some point of their relationship it is imperative that we ask the questions about a possible history of strangulation and advocate for victims with the medical community to assess for possible brain injury. We often become focused on the current issues or assume that a person's actions and behaviors are related to something else that we fail to ask simple questions that could rule out a possible brain injury or prevent further damage from failure to address an injury.

"Such women would have been labelled 'difficult' in the recent past, The police may dismiss them as being drunk, the state’s attorney may think they have mental illness.… Even the medical profession may dismiss them as being overdramatic. We have been able to intervene on their behalf to help other agencies understand that it is the T.B.I. that is causing some of these behaviors and symptoms.” NO VISIBLE BRUISES: DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY

Domestic violence and sexual assault advocates can do a simple screening to determine if further assistance may be needed.

A brief screening tool that was designed to be used by
professionals who are not TBI experts is the HELPS.2

HELPS is an acronym for the
most important questions to ask:
H = Were you hit in the head?
E = Did you seek emergency room treatment?
L = Did you lose consciousness? (Not everyone who suffers a
TBI loses consciousness.)
P = Are you having problems with concentration and
memory?
S = Did you experience sickness or other physical problems
following the injury?

If you
suspect a victim has a brain injury, or she answers “yes” to any of these
questions, help her get an evaluation by a medical or neuropsychological
professional – especially if she has suffered repeated brain injuries, which
may decrease her ability to recover and increase her risk of death. If she wishes,
reach out to the TBI service provider with information about DV, what support
she needs, and what services are available to her. Look for ways to work
together.

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Over the past months we have been exposed to a large amount
of hate speech. We have also seen a
number of reports of poor to dismal responses to sexual assault and domestic
violence. I won’t go into those in
detail. They fill our inboxes, Facebook
feeds, newspapers, and news channels.
The images fill our brains or we create our own images based on the details
we are given. We become angry at the way
people do not seem to take the allegations seriously and how systems and
persons continue to find ways to re-victimize.
We lose hope in our ability to make and sustain change. We are reminded of our own victimization(s)
and we start to feel helpless and hopeless.

Our response to the ongoing exposure to the victimization of
others is the result of insidious trauma, often called “micro-aggressions.” According to Laura S. Brown in her book, Cultural Competence in Trauma Therapy, “in
the lives of many individuals who are members of target groups, daily existence
is replete with reminders of the potential for traumatization and the absence
of safety.” These micro-aggressions can
often seem fairly benign such as when a group is ridiculed in a public way or
when one’s group is betrayed in a stereotypical way. However, when a person is targeted in a
violent way through hate speech, threats, invalidation of or disbelief in their
experience and this is made public the impact on other members of the group can
be significant.

Laura Brown goes on to quote Root (1992) as arguing that “when
a person is subjected to insidious traumatization, that individual experiences
a gradual and often imperceptible erosion of the psyche. A useful metaphor is that of very small drops
of acid falling on a stone. Each drop by
itself does little damage and may in fact etch the stone in such a way as to
make it more beautiful. Thus, in some
ways the experience of daily micro-aggression may evoke resilient coping responses (as when we find positive strategies to
address the ongoing violence against the groups of which we are members). Yet each drop of emotional acid creates just
enough damage to render the next drop more damaging. Over time a fissure develops in the form of
an emotional vulnerability that is invisible so long as certain aspects of the
biopsychosocial and spiritual environment remain steady or supportive.” (italics
mine)

This insidious trauma can create conditions in us similar to
those to whom the significant aggressions are directly applied. When it is combined with the effects of
previous trauma that we have experienced and are now re-living it damages the psyche
and makes us weary.

Our only hope is to surround ourselves with others who
understand what this type of trauma can do to a person and find ways to care
and nurture each other as we continue to face the onslaught of further violence
against groups to which we belong or have a strong affinity. We may, at times, need to take a break in
order to be able to come back in support of victims, but it is by filling our
cup that we are able to have enough to help others.

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

I
wanted someone who had actually experienced what this book talks about to
review this book. Ms. Cyr was happy to
do so and I thank her for taking the time.

S. R. Cyr has been a
social justice as well as a child safety advocate since the birth of her first
child in 1996.

Ms. Cyr’s volunteer
work as an advocate led her to obtain her BA in ‘Women and Gender Studies’ in
2013. Ms. Cyr’s ten-year plus experience – in and out of family court - has
re-directed her advocacy toward promoting community education on the effects of
childhood trauma and has inspired her to become an active proponent of ‘trauma
sensitize’ learning environments as well as medial environments.

Are
You Brave Enough To Listen? by S. R.
Cyr

I belong to
a tribe of warriors that no one from outside that tribe will ever talk about. I
know their names – and they know mine - but we’ve never met face- to-face.

This tribe I
speak of consists of female warriors. However, my tribe are not just female
warriors, but, female warriors denied “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Our kinship
validates our existence as we walk invisible amongst you.

You may
wonder what brought us strangers together. Why would hundreds -possibly
thousands of women - band together and support each other?

Here is my
answer: we are united in the fact that through no fault of our own, we have
been left with nothing but our voice. We have been left childless, financially
disabled, heart-broken, hopeless, shell-shocked, numb, disabled with PTSD, and
alone. We speak but no one hears us. We cry but no one wipes out tears. We
scream but our screams go unheard. We go through the motions of life but we
feel as if we are in quicksand.

Some
well-intentioned people attempt to comfort us with assurance that everything
will be just fine, but, it never is.

Imagine
being deprived of an active role in the nurturing, loving, and fostering of a
young child into young adulthood? Assuring us all will be ‘fine’ is a cue that
you are not truly listening.

How can one
mourn the death of a relationship that people insist has opportunity to be?? If
I could ask the well-meaning people one thing, it would be this: please, stop
telling me that my children will “come back.” Because truth-be-told, there is a
good chance they may not.

And, even if
they did, they will not be the children I once knew: trauma has a way of
changing people for life.

Let me
introduce you to the newest member of my tribe; her name is Donna Buiso. She –
like me- through several years of family court procedures – was stripped
of all parental rights.

I purchased
Ms. Busio’s memoir hoping to find the answer to the question that every mother
deprived of time spent with children wants to know: do the children ever come
back? Do the children deprived of their biological mother ever come to really
know their mother??

If you want
to find out that answer, I highly recommend purchasing Donna’s book.

As so
poignantly written within the forward of Donna Buiso’s book, Nothing But MyVoice, “This is a book that requires action. Action to change and rectify a
system that allows the continued unconscionable abuse of mothers. These
injustices must be corrected for the sake of all emotionally abused mothers,
their emotionally abused children, and for the welfare of society at large
{David P. Hayes, Ph.D.}.”

Donna
Busio’s depiction of her life with an emotionally abusive ex-husband can be
triggering for anyone who has lived this kind of hell.

Psychological
warfare is the only way to describe what it is like to co-parent with an
abusive ex-partner. Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public often forget that emotional,
verbal, financial, and judicial abuse fall within the spectrum of domestic
abuse.

Imagine
being court ordered to stand back and watch your own child suffer at the hands
of a person who uses verbal, emotional and psychological tactics to get their
adults needs met? Adults who choose to file for sole custody and refuse to
allow your child to be with you: imagine?

I bought Ms.
Busio’s book because I was also stripped of parental rights, decision making
power, and a visitation schedule. I was court ordered to sit back and watch as
my teens were raised in a home environment that – in my opinion- lacked
supervision, compassion, and authentic love.

I later
found out that one of her father’s tactics for controlling her behavior was to
threaten her with being “dropped off somewhere” because he could no longer
“handle her.” When she begged and pleaded to live with me- her mother that
raised her the first12 years of her life- her dad would respond,
“anywhere but with your mother.”

Even today,
as I re-count these events, I go numb. Admittedly, as I read Donna Buiso’s
depiction of her own children’s torture, I was triggered.

I cannot
fathom how a human – especially an adult- could be so cruel toward a child.

How can any
human – parent or probate judge- deny a child their biological mother?

Donna ends
her book with the words, “My voice is my strength. It’s all I have left. I will
continue to use it, not just for myself but for the children and for all of the
mothers who find themselves fighting to protect their family in court.”

Ms. Buiso
has spoken. And so has hundreds and thousands of other mothers throughout the
US as we warriors write incessantly to our local and national political leaders
as well as to major network television studios.

We warriors
have been left with nothing but our voices. For decades now, we have proven to
be beyond brave for articulating our pain.

Monday, February 22, 2016

I have an idea for a blog post running around in my brain but also dealing with heavy brain fog due to to a flu bug that took over my life for a week. So here are some things to read while you wait. AND take care of yourself. Remember, if you get sick and go to work, you infect others and you end up being sick even longer.

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Jon Krakauer is an investigative journalist who likes to
embed himself in a situation to delve into the intricacies of a situation or
experience. In Missoula, Mr. Krakauer
goes to Missoula, Montana to investigate the many systems and personalities
that become involved when a rape allegation is made on a college campus. I have heard interviews with Mr. Krakauer and
he has stated that Missoula is not atypical.
He did not pick Missoula because it was different but because it was so
similar to other college towns across the nation.

Jon does not leave any stone unturned in telling the stories
of rape allegations in this college town that treats its football players as
celebrities and heroes, granting the players a sense of entitlement that extends
to the women who attend the college. Mr.
Krakauer interviews victims and family members and has access to interviews
with the alleged rapists. He also delves
into the criminal justice system and campus investigative process and
delineates how the allegations are handled differently in each setting. He is
also explicitly describes the judicial process and how defense attorneys and
prosecutors are often so concerned with winning that the victims and
perpetrators often become pawns in the process, leaving victims to experience
more trauma during and after the plea and/or trial process.

Jon Krakauer researched the impact of trauma on victims and
is able to incorporate the work of Judith Herman, a clinical professor at
Harvard and author of Trauma and Recovery,
an important work on interpersonal violence and the trauma that occurs. David Lisak, an expert on serial rapists and college
sexual assault, is an expert witness for one of the trials in Missoula and Mr.
Krakauer pulls from his research and expert testimony in order to describe the
intricacies of understanding sexual assault.

Jon Krakauer’s greatest message in this book is that the
refusal to hold perpetrators accountable is their greatest weapon and the
justice systems’ greatest failure.

An article on traumatic brain injury and domestic violence:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/02/domestic-violence-tbi_n_7488168.html

An Education Writers' Association article on how trauma affects a students ability to engage in the classroom. If you read through the article you will find a link to a powerpoint that has some additional information. I like this because of how it also discuss trauma's intersection with race and poverty.http://www.ewa.org/blog-educated-reporter/when-grit-isnt-enough

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About Me

Linda Douglas is the Trauma Specialist for the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence working to enhance the capacity of member programs of the coalition, and local communities, to address the affects of trauma and the complex needs of victims with mental health and substance abuse problems.
She has her M.S.Ed. in Counseling from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia and has worked in the area of substance abuse and domestic violence since the mid-1990s when she coordinated the implementation of the Women in Recovery program for the YWCA of South Hampton Roads. This program was one of the first domestic violence programs in the country that provided services to battered women who self medicated with alcohol and other drugs. Ms. Douglas also provided training and consultation regarding the connection between substance abuse and domestic violence to other domestic violence programs in Virginia before moving to New Hampshire in 2005.
Up until the Spring of 2009, Linda was providing substance abuse counseling at Monadnock Family Services in Keene, NH.